In
November 1995, a Massachusetts jury convicted James Lucien of
first-degree murder, two counts of armed robbery, and one
count of unlawful possession of a firearm. Lucien was
sentenced to life in prison, whereupon he sought direct and
collateral review in the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts (SJC). When the majority of his state
challenges were rebuffed, see Commonwealthv.Lucien (Lucien I), 801 N.E.2d
247, 251 (Mass. 2004), Lucien petitioned the federal district
court for the District of Massachusetts for a writ of habeas
corpus, arguing that the trial court improperly handled the
admission of a plea agreement made by a government witness,
that the district court's jury instructions omitted an
element of the murder offense, and that trial counsel was
constitutionally ineffective. The district court denied
Lucien's petition. See Lucienv.Spencer (Lucien II), No. 07-11338-MLW, 2015
WL 5824726, at *35 (D. Mass. Sept. 30, 2015). Lucien now
appeals. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I.
Background

Lucien's
conviction followed a five-day trial in which evidence was
introduced to show that Lucien and a man named Jamal Butler
agreed to rob Alfred Clarke and his brother Ryan Edwards,
whom Lucien and Butler knew to be a drug dealer. The
Commonwealth presented evidence that Butler arranged a drug
deal through Clarke. The arrangement eventually led to Lucien
riding in the backseat of Edwards's two-door sedan while
Edwards drove and Clarke sat in the front passenger seat.
Lucien drew a firearm and ordered Clarke to hand over his
money, a pager, and a bracelet he was wearing. He then
ordered Clarke out of the car. After the car pulled away and
turned a corner, Edwards was shot in the lower-right torso.
The bullet, apparently fired from a .25 caliber automatic
weapon, killed him. A .25 caliber shell casing was later
found in the vehicle, but the murder weapon was never found.
Butler testified that when he reconvened with Lucien the
following day, the men split the loot and Lucien admitted he
had shot Edwards.

The
prosecution's principal theory of the case was that
Lucien committed an armed robbery and killed Edwards in the
process. In support of this theory, the prosecution presented
the testimony of a medical examiner who opined that, given
the angle of the bullet's entry into Edwards's body,
the shot could have been fired from the backseat of his
vehicle. Clarke testified that Lucien claimed to be
interested in purchasing cocaine from Edwards but then drew a
gun to commit a robbery once Edwards began driving. He
testified that he handed over his money, pager, and bracelet
as his brother pulled over; he exited as the car began to
drive away; and he saw a flash within the vehicle and heard a
gunshot. Butler, who pled guilty to unarmed robbery,
testified that he and Lucien met before the robbery at
Butler's girlfriend's home to forge a plan to rob
Edwards in a staged drug deal; that Butler set up the deal
because he knew Edwards; that Butler made first contact and
arranged to meet Edwards and Clarke in Edwards's car in a
parking lot; that Lucien and Butler drove to the parking lot
together; that Butler watched Lucien get in the back of
Edwards's and Clarke's car before it drove away; and
that when Lucien came over the next day to split the spoils,
he reported he shot Edwards "to make it look good."

Lucien
(through counsel) seized on the fact that Clarke also
admitted that he, too, had a firearm on his person during the
robbery. Lucien's defense theory was that Clarke fired
the fatal bullet after he got out of the car (presumably
trying to hit Lucien). Providing some support for this
defense, one officer who responded to the scene testified to
Edwards's dying declaration that he was shot by someone
outside the car (rather than, as Clarke testified, by Lucien
inside the car), and another officer testified to hearing two
gunshots. There were also some inconsistencies in
Clarke's and Butler's testimonies, and each had
incentive to lie at Lucien's expense--Butler to secure a
plea deal, and Clarke to shift blame for a shooting he
himself arguably perpetrated. On the other hand, there was
the shell casing found in the car, and the Commonwealth's
ballistician testified that Edwards was likely shot from
close range (although that testimony could not be confirmed
because Edwards's clothes were lost at the hospital and
no soot or powder was found on Edwards's body).

The
jury sided with the Commonwealth, and the state trial court
sentenced Lucien to life in prison on the first-degree murder
charge, a concurrent four-to-five-year term on the illegal
firearm charge, and concurrent eighteen-to-twenty-year terms
for the two armed robbery charges. He timely appealed,
arguing, among other things, that the trial court's jury
instructions were flawed because they did not "instruct
the jury that they could not consider Butler's guilty
plea as evidence against the defendant." Lucien
I, 801 N.E.2d at 255. He also took issue with the
felony-murder instructions, arguing that they did not comply
with Massachusetts law because they allowed the jury to
convict Lucien of murder even if Clarke fired the fatal shot.
Id. at 256.

In
addition to his direct appeal, Lucien filed a motion for a
new trial before the SJC pursuant to Massachusetts General
Laws chapter 278, section 33E. The new-trial motion asserted
that Lucien's trial counsel was ineffective for two
reasons. First, he allegedly gave "faulty advice about
the Commonwealth's ability to impeach [Lucien], if he
testified, and that [his] waiver of his right to testify was
thus not knowing and voluntary." Id. Second,
trial counsel did not call two experts, a pathologist and a
ballistician, both of whom were retained before trial. Lucien
claimed those experts would have undermined the
Commonwealth's evidence by opining that Edwards was
likely shot from farther away than the backseat of his
vehicle. Lucien also argued that one of his armed robbery
convictions was duplicative of his felony-murder conviction,
and that the SJC should exercise its discretionary power to
relieve him from the verdict or grant him a new trial.
See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 278, § 33E. The SJC
remitted the motion to the trial judge, the motion was
denied, and Lucien appealed.[1]

The SJC
consolidated Lucien's direct and collateral appeals and
then denied relief on all but Lucien's duplicity
challenge, vacating his conviction for the armed robbery of
Edwards because it was duplicative of the first-degree murder
conviction. (Lucien was convicted on a felony-murder theory,
so the armed robbery was an element of the murder offense.)
See Lucien I, 801 N.E.2d at 251, 260. Lucien filed a
second motion for a new trial a few months later in the trial
court, reasserting his ineffective assistance claims
concerning his right to testify and trial counsel's
refusal to call the pathologist and the ballistician, and
adding ineffective assistance claims based on trial
counsel's alleged mishandling of a suppression motion and
counsel's "fail[ure] to object to the lack of
appropriate instructions to [the] jury on [the] limited
purpose for which [a] co-defendant's guilty plea could be
used." He also asserted that he received
unconstitutionally substandard assistance of appellate
counsel in failing to raise on appeal the ineffective
assistance of trial counsel. The trial court denied the
motion, and a single justice of the SJC denied leave to
appeal. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 278, § 33E.

A
petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. §
2254 timely followed in the District of Massachusetts. The
district court denied Lucien's petition, see Lucien
II, 2017 WL 5824726, at *35, and this timely appeal
ensued.

II.
Discussion

We
review a district court's denial of a petition for habeas
corpus de novo. See Moorev.Dickhaut, 842 F.3d 97, 99 (1st Cir. 2016) (citing
Tetiv.Bender, 507 F.3d 50, 56
(1st Cir. 2007)). Like the district court, however, we are
required to afford significant deference to the state
court's decision under most circumstances. See
Scogginsv.Hall, 765 F.3d 53, 57 (1st
Cir. 2014). Unless a state court "does not address the
merits of a federal claim, " see Jenkinsv.Bergeron, 824 F.3d 148, 152 (1st Cir.
2016) (quoting Zuluagav.Spencer,
585 F.3d 27, 30 (1st Cir. 2009)), the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) permits us to
grant a habeas petition in only two circumstances: (1) if the
SJC's decision "was contrary to, or involved an
unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law,
as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,
" 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1); or (2) the decision on
the federal claim was "based on an unreasonable
determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented
in the State court proceeding, " id. §
2254(d)(2). The petitioner must also show that the state
court's error had a "substantial and injurious
effect" on the jury's verdict. See Fryv.Pliler, 551 U.S. 112, 121-22 (2007)
(citing Brechtv.Abrahamson, 507
U.S. 619, 631 (1993)).

Lucien
advances four claims on appeal. We assess each of these
challenges in turn.

A.
Butler's guilty plea

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lucien&#39;s
first argument concerns the entry of Butler&#39;s plea
agreement into evidence, and the judge&#39;s instructions
about the role it could play in the jury&#39;s verdict. As
Butler&#39;s direct examination was drawing to a close, the
trial court allowed the Commonwealth to read Butler&#39;s
plea agreement into evidence, and to elicit Butler&#39;s
comment on it. Lucien&#39;s counsel objected, saying,
"there is case law that creates certain obligations with
respect to agreements of this type. I think, you know, just
to protect the record, I&#39;m going to object to the
agreement, all right?" Citing Commonwealt ...

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